cookie decorating and holiday parties galore

this was our last busy weekend before baby comes. it was pretty tiring and a little ridiculous at 38 weeks pregnant, but so much fun! (also makes these days fly by while we wait for baby, which is a perk). next weekend we have nothing on the calendar, so i'm thinking it would be a great time to go into labor. hear that, baby boy? (i'm telling him because we all know i have no say in when it will happen) :) 

friday night we got together with our old co-worker friends from southwest community education. it's been almost a decade since we worked with them (!!), but we still manage to get together a couple times a year, which i love. also fun is the fact that every time we get together now there are more and more kids! kristin offered to host us at her new house, which was fun to see. she picked up pizzas and we just had a relaxing night hanging out with her, her 2 daughters, her twin sister (and her daughter), and our friends dave and tom. azalea loved getting to play with all the fun toys there.

 saturday azalea and i started the day at church decorating cookies with her lambs group. four other families came and we had sugar cookies, frosting, and sprinkles galore! cookie decorating with toddlers is....interesting. azalea did really well for the first 30 minutes. she helped me decorate cookies and i let her eat two of them, but when she realized she wasn't going to get to eat every cookie she decorated, she was not a happy girl and started melting down! haha. apparently i'm continuing my "mean mom" streak ;) i decided that i should find her another activity. so she ran around in the hall with the others kids the rest of the time. crisis averted. 

we came home for lunch, then i took azalea to thatchers' parents for another edition of "you can't nap at our house because dad is using power tools in the basement." i'm thankful they were willing to let her nap there, and i could get some stuff done. i bought my final christmas gift (yay!), then headed home to make meatballs for holiday party #2, which was a blogger holiday party at dawn's house. 

 everyone's significant others and kids came too, which was fun! there were close to 30 people there and everyone brought delicious food. azalea had a great time playing with all the kids and toys. sometimes i still can't believe i took a chance and showed up to a happy hour with people i had never met in real life back in 2012 and it has since blossomed into these awesome friendships. thanks again dawn for opening your house up to all of us!

if you think that sounds like a lot for one day, i probably shouldn't tell you we also went to our next door neighbors' holiday party in the evening. we put azalea to bed and my brother hung out at our house. it was another fun gathering (with the 50 somethings in our neighborhood - we were totally the babies there). we could not ask for nicer neighbors! this picture was taken after i left at 10pm because i couldn't keep my eyes open :)

sunday was a much quieter day! i took azalea to lambs group, but we skipped the actual church service. thatcher did some work in the basement, which looks like this these days:

working on framing 

azalea napped at grandma and grandpa's again. i got some stuff done around the house then relaxed :) in the evening i headed over to my next door neighbor rebekah's to decorate sugar and gingerbread cookies with her. we've done it for the last few years and it's always fun. we decided to do it after the kids went to bed this year. haha. ok baby....i'm ready for you!!